Stud-Muffin Approved

So, my own books and the Teeny Publishing Bidness are doing rather well in these last few months – to the point where I have enough money on hand to consider spiffing up the little suburban cottage that has been our home for practically longer than anywhere else that I have ever lived. No kidding – in the military, the longest stretch I was ever in one place and one home was six years. Growing up, the longest period of time in one house was only a couple of years longer than that – in the Redwood House, which was taken by freeway construction when I was in high school. Anyway, the last round of heavy redecorating – painting the walls, new curtains, and slipcovers and all … that was in 2003, when my daughter was in Iraq for the start of the second Gulf war … and there’s been a lot of wear and tear and dogs and cats on certain items since then. Now we are researching the costs of new kitchen cabinets and countertops, having reached peak exasperation with what was originally installed by the contractor who build the house. In the meantime, as we try to find out the real cost involved in doing the kitchen, we are messing around with the small stuff.

Like the window coverings. The house came with a set of extraordinarily cheap and cheap-looking plastic venetian blinds, which lasted only as long as it took me – after buying the place, courtesy of the GI Bill – to rip them down and put in home-made white and blue striped fabric curtains with an insulating liner. Alas, those curtains reached their own limit – and window by window, we’ve been replacing them with those 2-inch wooden blinds available from Home Depot … or as my daughter calls it, Home Despot. A bit on the pricy side, as Home Despot goes, especially since all of our windows are odd sizes, but they let a greater amount of light into the rooms, block the outside heat/cold … and look amazing … clean and less fussy than my curtains. The profits from a couple of projects let us complete installing the last blind in the biggest window this last weekend. And – it looks amazing.

This last weekend, we also trekked up into the Hill Country, to Spring Branch/Kendalia, to where one of my daughter’s good friends has a weekend job at another animal-charity oriented shop; The Goose is Loose Antiques and Collectables. Kaz ran a wonderful resale shop in Boerne, where we first met her until it closed because of having the lease on the building increasted, and then another one in that same city, which had the bad taste and bad judgement to fire her, but The Goose is Loose has the excellent good taste to hire her on a part-time basis. Kaz works social media like a pro, and my daughter had spotted a charming small table with folding leaves which would fit in the dining area admirably – but we would have to take a look at it, before I would commit to spending on it. Fortunately, the table was even more appealing in person, and a good fit for the dining area, which is even smaller and more cramped than the kitchen itself. We lined up the chairs, and put a beaten copper bowl shaped like a lotus flower in the middle … no, nothing breakable anywhere that the cats are likely to lounge in the sunshine, after clearing away anything that will take up space better used (to their way of thinking) for a cat’s many leisure hours.